e men were already weakening. They had had
enough of it and were quite ready to slink away; but Pasqual was a
raging lion. Revenge for the death of his brother, wrath over his own
crippled condition, fury at the failure of the assault, and hatred on
general principles of all honest means and honest men, all prompted
him to order and enforce a renewal of the attack, all served to madden
him to such a degree that even burning his adversaries to death seemed
simply a case of serving them right. What cared he that two of the
besieged were fair young girls, non-combatants? They were George
Harvey's daughters, and that in itself was enough to bring balm to his
soul and well-nigh cause him to forget his physical ills. One or two
of the band strove to point out that the faintest indignity offered to
the sisters would array not only all Arizona, but all Mexico against
them. Like dogs they would be hunted to their holes and no quarter be
given. Returning hitherto with their spoils, Chihuahua or Sonora had
welcomed them with open arms; but what outlaw could find refuge in
Mexican soil who had dared to wrong the children of George Harvey and
Inez Romero? It was even as they were pointing this out to Pasqual and
urging that he consent to be lifted into the ambulance and driven away
southward before the return of the cavalry, that Moreno himself
appeared. Slipping out of his western window, dropping to the ground
and making complete circuit of the corral, he suddenly joined in the
excited conference. What he said was in Spanish, or that pan-Arizona
_patois_ that there passes current for such, and was a wild, fervid
appeal. They had ruined him, him and his. He was unmasked, betrayed,
for now his connection with the band was established beyond all
question; now he was known and would soon be branded as an outlaw. His
home was being destroyed before his eyes,--not that that amounted to
much now that he could no longer occupy it,--his wife and child must
flee at once for Sonora and he go with them, but recompense for his
loss he must have; never again could he venture into Arizona: he would
be known far and wide as the betrayer of his benefactor's children,
though he called God and all the saints in the Spanish calendar to
witness he never dreamed of their being involved in his plot. The
paymaster's funds, not the lives of any of the paymaster's men, were
what he had sought to take, and now, there lay the dollars almost
within their grasp